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Updated: June 7, 2025
We have a glimpse of her in 1748 through a letter from Montesquieu. She was then about fifty, and had gathered about her a more or less distinguished company, which was enlarged after the death of Mme. de Tencin, in the following year. She gave dinners twice a week one on Monday for artists, among whom were Vanloo, Vernet, and Boucher; and one on Wednesday for men of letters.
It is scarcely possible for us to judge of the charm which these societies possessed in the great world. The society of beaux esprits which met at the house of Madame de Poplinière, in the time of Madame de Tencin, was only short-lived, like the good fortune of the lady herself.
George, had been awaiting in France the fulfilment of the promises and hopes which had been flashed before his eyes. Weary of hope deferred, he had conceived the idea of a bold stroke. "Why not attempt to cross in a vessel to the north of Scotland?" had been the question put to him by Cardinal Tencin, who had, some time before, owed his cardinal's hat to the dethroned King of Great Britain.
His air and look are cold and forbidding; but ask him to sing, or praise his works, his eyes and smiles open and brighten up. In short, I can show him to you: the self-applauding poet in Hogarth's Rake's Progress, the second print, is so like his very features and very wig, that you would know him by it, if you came hither for he certainly will not go to you. Tencin."
I pray you tarry not too long before proving the judgment of Béchamel in regard to this new vintage of Ai." "Ah, your Grace," exclaimed De Tencin, "were it not Philippe of Orléans, we women might not be apt to sit in peace together. Yet, as we have earlier proved your hospitality, we may perhaps not scruple to continue." Philippe smiled blandly. The remark was not ill-fitted to the actual case.
In later years, however, after the foundling had become famous throughout Europe, his mother, Madame Tencin, sent for him, and acknowledged her relationship.
For decency's sake, however, it was judged proper he should previously be convinced and converted. A ghostly instructor was soon found, ready to accomplish his conversion in the shortest possible time. This was the Abbe Tencin, a profligate creature of the profligate Dubois, and like him working his way to ecclesiastical promotion and temporal wealth, by the basest means.
Meantime, that the moments may not lag, let me recommend, if I am allowed, this new vintage of Ai, which Béchamel advises me we have never yet surpassed in all our efforts. Madame de Tencin, let me beg of you to be seated close to my arm. Not upon this side, Mademoiselle Haidée, if you please, for I have been wheedled into promising that station this night to another.
Measured even by the complaisant standards of her own time, there can be but one verdict upon the character of Mme. de Tencin, though it is to be hoped that the scandal-loving chroniclers have painted her more darkly than she deserved. But whatever her faults may have been, her talent and her influence were unquestioned.
But its foundations were more firmly laid in the drawing room of Mme. de Tencin, where the brilliant wit and radical theories of Montesquieu, as well as the pronounced materialism of Helvetius, found a congenial atmosphere.
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